I know that’s the reality for plenty of families, though, and there are kids who are far, far more seasoned travellers than I’ll ever be. But even the most travel-savvy kid and cautious parent is no match for an incompetent airline.

Case in point: this story on Consumerist. Jonathan put his ten-year-old daughter on a plane in Boston to visit her grandparents in Cleveland. He paid the “unaccompanied minors” fee, which is supposed to guarantee that airline staff would look out for the girl until she was delivered safely into the hands of her waiting grandparents.

That didn’t happen. She somehow got onto a flight that was boarding at the same gate for Newark, and no one discovered it until her grandparents watched everyone but her come off the flight they were waiting for and called her father to find out why she wasn’t on the plane.

I’m a little unsure how she was able to get on the wrong flight if her father was there watching her board, but if it was the same jetway or if they walked out onto the tarmac and boarded via steps, I could see how that happened.

It gets better. The family finally figured out where the girl was when a Continental representative called the grandparents (whose number was listed on her paperwork) and informed them they could some pick her up. In Newark. No-one called the father until the grandparents did.

The story doesn’t say how the poor girl finally got to her grandparents, but it does say the only resolution Continental has offered far is to refund the unaccompanied minor fee.

Yikes.

The books range from cry-it-out to attachment parenting in style: Dr Truby King’s 1913 book Feeding and Care of Baby, Dr Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care and Jean Liedloff’s 1975 The Continuum Concept.

Our Truby King expert is Claire Verity (pictured), an unqualified maternity nurse who thinks there is nothing wrong with leaving a day-old baby to scream outside in a freezing garden, while parents sit inside and sip wine. The fresh air is good for them you know. This is a woman who thinks newborns should only be cuddled 10 minutes a day so they don’t become spoiled. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t have children herself. But she’s nannied for Jerry Hall and Sting, celebrity endorsements which no doubt helped her win a spot on the show.

The series caused an outcry in the UK when it was aired in 2007. After a journalist found that Ms Verity’s advertised qualifications were non-existant, Channel 4, the producers of the documentary, carried out an investigation into her background and as a result ceased working with her. But had the damage to poor baby Mia, Ms. Verity’s ’subject’ on the show, been done already?

The parents sensed something was wrong with her approach – her mother cried when she couldn’t comfort her daughter. UK experts agreed that her methods were potentially harmful. Viewers complained to the UK TV regulatory body in droves. And yet the ABC chose to screen the program here with no qualification, warning or disclaimer about what viewers would see.

Australian message boards and forums have already lit up in unanimous horror at Ms Verity’s techniques. One poster on the ABC’s message board described it as the ‘Sadistic Bitch’ method of parenting.

Did you see the show and what did you think? Will you be watching again?

A New Hampshire mother went into her basement to do a load of laundry, and her two-year-old son somehow managed to lock the door with her still in the basement. Then she smelled smoke.

Jodi McKenzie told reporters she grabbed a sledgehammer in the basement and literally smashed her way through the door to get to her son and get the two of them out of the house (which, sadly, burned to the ground).

Somehow, people who have never had kids (or at least babysat for kids) don’t seem to understand how they can lock you somewhere – note the first comment here, an automatic attack on the mother for not watching her son every second the day. News flash: you can be WATCHING your child as they lock you out of your own house. I was standing on my front porch, phone in my hand, when my then-two-year-old decided to close the front door on me as a joke. Then she turned the lock.

I had been looking straight at her through the screen door, but I didn’t think she could spin the lock in the knob yet, and by the time I realized it, it was too late. By a fluke, our spare key had been borrowed by my parents and wasn’t where I keep it, but fortunately I had the phone – so I spent twenty minutes standing at the door, talking to my daughter to keep her standing there, while I waited for my husband to drive home from work with his own set of keys.

It made me set up extra precautions, including an extra key for the neighbor. This story, however, makes me wonder if I missed the bigger risks – the doors that lock INSIDE the house.

Image: NECN.com

Roxanna Patricia Villamarin seemed like the perfect nanny, until her clients found out that instead of taking their children on fun outings to the zoo, she was dumping them at another in-house daycare. Villamarin paid this unlicensed daycare provider $US10 per day.

Her own salary? $US16 per hour.

Now she’s facing five counts of grand theft, one count of intimidating a witness and one count of annoying phone calls (is that a real crime?).

How did she do it?

Villamarin encouraged her clients with her focus on educational outings and strong opinions on child-rearing. She even offered to make organic homemade baby food for the little ones. But according to officials, Villamarin had been leaving at least five clients’ children in a rundown apartment over five years.

“She would pick up the children; she would drop them off at an unlicensed daycare centre. And she would pursue other goals,” City Attorney Will Rivera said. Goals like working other jobs, in a farmer’s market and in her family’s restaurant.

Villamarin told the kids they were going to “the library,” so when the kids relayed that information to their parents, no red flags were raised.

But there weren’t many books in “the library,” a small, rundown apartment with barred windows on a busy street in East Hollywood.

I know if my kids told me their nanny was taking them to the library all the time, I’d be thrilled. But I like to think I’d ask them a little more about it.

What did you read at the library? Did you go for story time? Did you see any of your friends there? Where are the books you checked out? One child told his parents he took a shower at the library. Villamarin told the parents their son was being silly, but that certainly would have given me pause. My children shouldn’t be showering anywhere I’m not.

According to Villamarin, the parents deserved it. “They treat me bad, I treat them bad,” she says. Among her complaints: she was underpaid, didn’t receive health insurance, and was paid under the table. Did she ever raise these issues? “No, it’s not my style to complain,” she says.

Outsourcing her work and taking advantage of trusting parents, however, is her style.

Because George had suffered an epileptic fit four months
before receiving the MMR vaccine, he had a 2 percent chance of suffering from a
seizure as a result of the MMR. However, there are no known cases of children
dying as a result of these seizures, and therej is no evidence that George suffered
one before his death. The coroner also ruled that George’s symptoms (he had
diarrhea and red eyes in the days before his death) emerged too soon after the
MMR shot to be linked to it.

The coroner agreed with other infant health experts that
George had died of a rare condition called Sudden Unexpected Death in
Childhood.

George’s parents strongly disagree with the verdict. Sarah
Fisher, George’s mother, said, “I think it’s so wrong to put the death of a
healthy little boy down to natural causes. There’s nothing natural about an
18-month-old boy dying of nothing, because that’s what it was–nothing.”

My heart goes out to George’s parents in these unthinkably
difficult times, further complicated by a legal controversy.

Photo: Getty Images

Two weeks ago, the Macquarie Fields man finished serving a five year sentence for an attack on his young neighbour, and immediately moved back into his home.

Unbelievably, now that he has served his sentence he has no restrictions on his movements.

The girl was 12 when she was abused and was so devastated by the attack she tried to kill herself, she has said. She was now living at a friend’s home because she was so frightened of the man.

“When I’m here (at home) I stay in my room and I don’t talk to anyone, and every time I hear the front door it’s like, ‘Who’s there?’,” she said. I’ve actually been staying at a mate’s house.”

What do you think – should child sex offenders be ordered to remain a certain distance from their victims?

[Source]

A father in England has been cleared of any foul play in the death of his six-month-old son. As far as pathologists can tell, Daniel Dowling likely fell on little Paisley Brown during a game of "aeroplanes." The boy's parents are both eighteen, but I wouldn't pin this horrible accident on the inexperience of teens parenting. I've done it. So has my husband, my brother, my father and my mother. My fifty-something-year-old boss delights in picking up my daughter and throwing her in the air – a practice she's grown to love more and more as she's gotten older.Through it all, she's earned nary a scratch.

So does this give you pause? Would you say no more "wheeeeeee" with the baby? Or is this just a sad, sad accident that, when put in perspective, is just as likely to happen as your baby getting hit by a bus with you tomorrow?

Image: MercySake

As recently as two days before delivery, doctors saw nothing wrong with the woman's second pregnancy. But at 37 weeks pregnant, she arrived at the hospital emergency room in extreme pain with her abdomen "tender and tense." Rushed into surgery, doctors soon found the mother of two mother of two (including the newborn baby boy) had a rare secondary abdominal pregnancy. They happen in one in ten thousand pregnancies, but the fetus rarely makes it out of the first trimester. Only 109 women with a secondary abdominal pregnancy have delivered a baby in the entire world; this is only the second in India.

A study in the Journal of the Institute of Medicine, published in 1998, followed the first Indian mom to deliver after a secondary abdominal pregnancy. It reports the risk of maternal death is 17 times greater than the average pregnancy, 90 times greater than an intrauterine pregnancy (where the baby develops in the uterus).

Uncontrollable bleeding is one of the chief risks to the mother, and 30-year-old Meena had to be treated mid-surgery to stop the bleeding. It worked, and doctors were able to successfully deliver her child without any further trouble. The little boy weighed two and a quarter kilograms (roughly four pounds).

Both mom and baby are doing fine.

Source: The Times of India

Image: DailyMail

I'd be clinging to my daughter for dear life – screw the crazy people on the ground telling me to just let go and it will be fine. One Florida mum had a much firmer grip on reality this weekend (or a much closer relationship with the Big One Upstairs). When emergency officials instructed Sherri Pinkerton to drop her little girl from the stalled Crazy Bus at the Family Days celebration, she did. The girl landed safely in the arms of a police officer.

Firefighters rushed with a ladder to rescue Pinkerton, who was hanging on for dear life from the Ferris wheel-like ride. Officials said families were exiting the ride when it suddenly started moving again, and Pinkerton and her daughter were swept along for the ride. She clung to her daughter with one hand and the ride with the other, but when people on the ground saw she was losing her hold on the ride, they told her to drop the girl.

I've got to give Pinkerton an incredible amount of credit. If she hadn't let go, this story may not have the happy ending it has. But I don't know if I would have had the intestinal fortitude to just let go. Could you?

Image: Corey Leopold

According to NBCSanDiego.com, his mother said that, "he started growing after he was two months old." Doctors think he may have an endocrine problem but they're not sure and are doing more tests.

Here are some photos. Wow. Poor kid.

Source/images: NBCSanDiego.com